THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

230 Aeschylus [19-48]
Be thou my willing champion I
Pylades,
Pass we aside, till rightly I discern
Wherefore these women throng in suppliance.
(PYLADES and ORESTES withdraw; the CHORUS enters bearing
vessels for libation; ELECTRA follows them; they pace slowly
towards the tomb of Agamemnon.)
CHORUS (singing)
Forth from the royal halls by high command
I bear libations for the dead.
Rings on my smitten breast my smiting hand,
And all my cheek is rent and red,
Fresh-furrowed by my nails, and all my soul
This many a day doth feed on cries of dole.
And trailing tatters of my vest,
In looped and windowed raggedness forlorn,
Hang rent around my breast,
Even as I, by blows of Fate most stern
Saddened and torn.
strophe I
antistrophe I
Oracular thro' visions, ghastly clear,
Bearing a blast of wrath from realms below,
And stiffening each rising hair with dread,
Came out of dream-land Fear,
And, loud and awful, bade
The shriek ring out at midnight's witching hour,
And brooded, stern with woe,
Above the inner house, the woman's bower
And seers inspired did read the dream on oath,
Chanting aloud In realms below
The dead are wroth;
Against their slayers yet their ire doth glow.
Therefore to bear this gift of graceless worth—
O Earth, my nursing mother!—
The woman god-accurs'd doth send me forth
Lest one crime bring another.
Ill is the very word to speak, for none
Can ransom or atone
For blood once shed and darkening the plain.
strophe 2